Desert Plane Crash Causes Power Outages

Lights flickered, air-conditioners faltered and traffic lights went on the blink in the county Tuesday afternoon when a small plane crashed into power lines in the desert and caused a dip in voltage.

Three people died when the plane hit two 500,000-volt transmission lines in Hesperia, in the southern Mojave Desert, officials said. The crash victims were not identified.

Southern California Edison customers in Simi Valley, Thousand Oaks, Moorpark and Fillmore were affected by the incident, which occurred about 1:50 p.m., Edison spokesman Steve Conroy said.

“It caused a momentary interruption to our service area, but power was restored to most of them immediately,” Conroy said.

Traffic lights in Moorpark and Thousand Oaks, switched to backup generators by the power failure, went into flashing mode and turned intersections into four-way stops, sheriff’s deputies said.

“There were lots of lights on emergency flash for a while, but we’ve got most of the problems straightened out,” said Senior Deputy Ed LeClair in Thousand Oaks.

The voltage dip had a domino effect, knocking out power to some telephone customers in the county. GTE lost power to its central office, which caused a network tie-up that affected about 200,000 customers, said Mike Raydo, a GTE spokesman. Pacific Bell customers experienced similar problems, a spokeswoman said.